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Exoplanet with a cloudless sky may let us see inside a gas giant

The clearest skies we’ve seen on an exoplanet

Engine House VFX

By John Wenz

There’s never a cloudy day on WASP-96b. This hot gas giant may have the least cloudy skies on any exoplanet astronomers have ever seen, and consequently, that makes it a great place to plumb the depths and study in what might be happening below the planet’s clear skies.

“By ‘clear’ we mean cloud-free, which means the actual atmosphere is moderately see-through,” says Nikolay Nikolov at Exeter University in the UK.